FREDERICTON -- Life in New Brunswick will likely get more expensive Tuesday, as the Liberal government unveils deficit-reduction measures that one critic warns will cost the province its competitive tax advantage.

"Hang onto your wallets, because this is going to hit taxpayers hard," Kevin Lacey, the Atlantic director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said Monday.

A two-percentage point increase in the HST to 15 per cent is one option the government has been considering as a result of its year-long strategic program review to address a structural deficit of up to $600 million.

Right now the harmonized sale tax is 13 per cent in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, 14 per cent in Prince Edward Island, and 15 per cent in Nova Scotia.

Lacey said any benefit the province reaps from the increased tax in the short term will be erased in the long run.

"New Brunswick right now is at a position where, vis-a-vis the other Maritime provinces, it is at a competitive advantage. After the budget that competitive advantage is going to be gone and it's going to lose a major weapon it has to create a prosperous economy in a region that's all very similar," he said.

"The HST is going to hit taxpayers hard who are already struggling under higher prices for things like food and other goods. It's really like squeezing water from a stone because taxpayers really don't have any more to give."

Progressive Conservative Leader Bruce Fitch says the government will be "taking the lazy way out" if it raises the HST.

"All businesses and people will feel the effect of any HST increase so the priority of jobs and economy has been put on the back burner and replaced by a tax-and-spend government," Fitch said.

The government is also considering a corporate tax hike, the implementation of highway tolls, and civil service cuts.

"The other Atlantic provinces are wringing their hands seeing these taxes go up because they won't have the pressure anymore of having a lower tax jurisdiction at their border," Lacey said.

He said tolls are really a double tax because New Brunswickers are already paying for the roads every time they gas up, through gas taxes.

Lacey said Nova Scotia is considering new highway tolls and will be looking to New Brunswick for the licence to proceed.

Last week, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said it was up to New Brunswick to determine the best location to put potential tolls, but hinted the border wasn't a good idea.

Premier Brian Gallant has stated that spending and revenue measures will balance out 50/50 over his government's first two budgets.

He has already reduced the size of cabinet and the number of deputy ministers. Gallant and the cabinet ministers also took a cut in pay. Savings in last year's budget were $115 million.

A government source told The Canadian Press that cuts to the civil service, including a 30 per cent reduction in upper and middle management, will save $46 million in this budget.

The provincial debt is roughly $12.4 billion, and interest payments alone are about $700 million each year.

A Cambridge, Ont., mother says she was told to stop breastfeeding her daughter at a gym Sunday because her "breast milk could stain the mats." Monica Makey was at Dynamo Gymnastics with her daughter Vayda, who is nearly two years old, for the pair's first "parent and tot" gymnastics class.
Source

Chuck Dunlop was having some health issues, and he wanted to find his family's medical history.
He actually found quite a bit more — a full-blooded brother he never knew about, and his biological father's big extended family in Yukon, ready to welcome him into the fold.
Source

After a Canadian icebreaker was diverted from a research mission in the Arctic to assist with never-before-seen levels of ice off the coast of Newfoundland, a climate-change researcher is sounding the alarm about the potential for increasingly treacherous conditions in the North Atlantic.
Source

Police in Whistler, B.C., say they have found the body of an Australian woman missing since November.
In a news release, Whistler RCMP says Allison Raspa's body was recovered from Alpha Lake Park, just off the Sea-to-Sky Highway.
Source

In hindsight, it's strange that for years, anyone installing a Facebook app could not only give that app's developer access to their personal information, but the personal information of all their friends. Where your friends lived, worked, and went to school — not to mention their interests and the pages they had liked — were all fair game.
Source

WINNIPEG -- A group that represents defence lawyers says some proposed laws aimed at cracking down on drivers distracted by hand-held electronic devices go too far. Manitoba and Ontario are two provinces planning to let police temporarily suspend the licences of drivers caught using hand-held cellphones and other equipment.
Source

Ontario's new Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford celebrated what he called a "united" party at a rally in Toronto on Monday.
Speaking to supporters at the Toronto Congress Centre in Etobicoke, Ford said the party has "a united caucus, a united group of candidates .
Source

A pod of dolphins has become trapped by sea ice near Heart’s Delight-Islington, Newfoundland -- a small town roughly one-and-a-half hour’s drive from St. John’s. “Ice drove them in,” retired local fisherman Charlie Sooley told NTV on Monday.
Source

Unveiling a long-awaited plan to combat the national scourge of opioid drug addiction, U.S. President Donald Trump called Monday for stiffer penalties for drug traffickers, including the death penalty.
"Toughness is the thing that they most fear," Trump said.
Source